The Prevention Plan

Staff Blog by: Paul in Legal

Taking the stairs, at a moderate speed, with a healthy pair of knees, is good for your health! It increases your cardio-vascular health and your energy level, and it works muscles in your legs that you don’t use very often! But, what if your stairs took you someplace magical?

I have climbed a lot of stairs in my career…when I was young(er), it was just to do it, later it was because someone else wanted to do it…now, it is just to see if I can still do it! Kind of a metaphor for life, I think! But taking the stairs for me has to be more than utilitarian…it has to take me someplace worth going, and if the trip itself is not memorable, then the view at the top has to be. Are we still talking about stairs, or have we segued to our metaphor of the day: Stairs as life?

Stairs, I think, ought only to go up. Going down ought to be called something else, because none of the best things about stairs are true on the way down…life again? Maybe. Going up has the promise of perspective, context and a way to understand what you see. Going up is an unnatural experience, since gravity, duty and obligation all work to hold us down. Going up is defiant, confident and hopeful, with the promise of something new. New, that is, if you take the right stairs…

Choice…it can be a common theme and even here it finds relevance.

Let’s talk about memorable stairs. These are the stairs we would climb if offered, and with great expectation of the top step and beyond. These stairs hold promise of an experience…
The Empire State Building, at 1576 steps, is quite a haul. At the top, you can see forever, as long as forever is mostly mid-town, New Jersey and the 5 boroughs…still, from the ESB, you can see America’s great, green lady…The Statue of Liberty!

The Statue of liberty has several sets of stairs, with the main set taking you up 354 steps, for a peek, if you are lucky, of the Empire State building and the New York Harbor. Our Lady Liberty was designed, as you know, by Frederic Eiffel and was a gift to the US to mark our centennial. Mr. Eiffel was an engineer who designed a tower…I forget the name, but it’s famous…let’s just call it Mr. Eiffel’s Tower…and if you climbed it, you’d climb 1665 steps!

1665 steps is an endurance feat and an accomplishment, but why would anyone do it? You know why…it is the view of Paris at the top…a reward that some might climb another thousand steps to see. In life, and in Paris it seems, the number of steps is not important, as long as the reward at the top is worth it!

It seems as if all great rewards come at a price. 1500 hundred steps to see New York City…another 160 to see Paris…1900 total to see the ruins at Macchu Picchu. And every day, people are willing to make the effort to get the reward. Sometimes we know what it will be, other times it is a surprise, but either way, we climb those steps because we think it to be worthwhile and anticipation of the reward is almost as powerful a motivator as achievement of reward.

Perhaps that is the secret…make the reward enticing enough, and people will do anything to get it. Now I'm talking about life, not the stairs. We want the reward at the end of the trip, and we are willing to make the effort, endure the pain, enjoy the pleasure and obligate ourselves to do what needs to be done, for a very long time, just to see what the end looks like.

So, here’s the deal:  take the stairs every time you see them. There is a reward at the top, every time. It could be a terrific view of Paris at sunset, or sunrise over a pyramid, or maybe, it could be the view of your of your great-grand kids when you're ninety…because taking the stairs added 20 years to your life. You always get that terrific view at the top of the climb…you just never know when you'll get it or exactly what it might be!

Be healthy! Climb to the top and look around, and smile! The view is terrific! From here, you can see all the way to the rest of your life!